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Sunday, February 10, 2013

TV Review: Community Season 4 premiere (Confirmed: Epic)

Community has had an immediate cult following, one you can see the cast is quite grateful for.

We here at The Epic Review tend to only review
series premiere’s and finales when it comes to TV shows, but for the Epic
season 4 debut of the already cult classic NBC series Community, an exception
had to be made. Sice the end of Season
3 fans of this beloved series have been an absolute roller coaster ride.After the normal speculation that the show
would be cancelled was subdued, series creator and show runner Dan Harmon left
the show, and had quite a nasty falling out with NBC.Shortly after that Chevy Chase who plays the
very inappropriate Pierce Hawthorne announced he was leaving the show, due to
his own differences with staff behind the scenes.All of this combined with fact that NBC
decided to delay the start date of season 4 to February 2013 left fans waiting
with bated breath to see what was to become of their favorite show? Despite all
of these uphill battles the group came roaring back stronger than ever!

New show runners Dave Guarascio and David Moses left, were able to capture some of the original heart of Community that series creator Dan Harmon right has lost somewhere along the way.

Since around the middle of Season 2 the dynamics of
Community have really been shifting, the show that was once about a group of
semi geeky misfits at a Community college shifted toward a full blown
commentary on Geek culture with almost every episode. This shift in focus made the show the dream
geek sitcom, but hurt the show with general audiences resulting in sub-par ratings. When Community was at its best
it provided a seamless blend of geek culture and Community College hi jinks,
and the season 4 premiere finally brought the group at Greendale back to that
place.

Fred Willard as an Alternate reality Pierce was one of the best Hi jinks from History 101!

The season 4 opener played to the collective geeks
wishes of Community fans while at the same time staying just grounded
enough.In the episode History 101 the
group is finally on the verge of getting into the history of Ice Cream class
they all need to graduate.Upon finding
out the news that Jeff took Summer classes at Greendale, and is on the verge
finishing a semester early the group becomes distraught Abed in particular, and
a classic Community tales ensues.

Jeff has to compete in the Hunger Deans, in order to win the group class spots in History of Ice Cream.

As it turns out Dean Pelton overbooked the history
of Ice Cream course, and he plans on making the student body compete in his
versions of the Hunger Games the Hunger Deans in order to gain admission to the
class. (Remember Hunger Games was just a little bit more relevant when this
episode was originally scheduled to air.)While a supposed all new Jeff Winger fights to the death dean
Abed chooses to escape to multiple realities in order to escape the fact that
this is the groups last year at Greendale.Realities that include: A laugh track sitcom where Pierce has been
recast as Fred Willard (This is hilarious considering the fact that Chevy Chase
is leaving the show, and you could see the recast as feasible within the main
community reality), and communities version of the Muppet Babies this is all
done by Abed using very Inception like techniques in order to jump from reality
to reality.All of this takes place as
Jeff is competing to win each member of the group a spot in the history of Ice
Cream class, as hosted by Dean Pelton who for some reason is dressed as Katniss
Everdeen the girl on fire.

Greendale Babies, Communities version of the Muppet Babies was one of the many spoofs in History 101.

The overall results were quite possibly Communities most masterful
spoof show, while there have been other spoofs I liked way better (Modern Warfare
and Basic Rocket Science come immediately to mind) this one was just done so
well.History 101 also came at a time
when NBC had to deliver an Epic community episode to ensure fans that new show
runners David Guarascio and Moses Port where going to be able to maintain Communities
spot on the television Geek throne (Sorry Big Bang Theory!), and the results
were just that, and then some.History
101 gave all the diehard fans that incredible commentary on pop culture that they
have come to expect, and at the same time kept the show just grounded enough.It also captured the original heart of a show
that at its core is just about a group of friends navigating through day to day
life at a Community College, and that heart is what really made this show work
in the first place.